When The Bough Breaks

With a bitter taste in my mouth and eyes brimming with tears, breathing hard and loud, I returned to the grisly chore. The helmet finally came loose and the bare skull flopped to the ground. I stared down into the lifeless, bearded face of Jim Halstead, the coach at La Casa de los Ninos. His lips were drawn back in death, cast in a permanent sneer. The force of landing after his final free fall had snapped his jaws down upon his tongue, and the severed tip rested on the hairy chin like some fleshy, parasitic grub. His eyes were open and rolled backward, the whites flooded with blood. He cried crimson tears.

I looked away from him and saw the sun hit something shiny several feet to the right. I walked to it, found the gun and examined it - a chrome - plated .38. I took it and tucked it in the waistband of my trousers.

The ground at my feet radiated heat and the stench of something burning. Congealed tar. Toxic waste. Bio - un degradable garbage. Polyvinyl vegetation. A bluejay had landed on Halstead's face. It pecked at his eyes.

I found a dusty drop cloth peppered with specks of dried cement. The bird fled at my approach. I covered the body with the cloth, weighted down the corners with large stones and left him that way.

27

The address the receptionist had given me for Tim Kruger matched the oversized steel numbers on the face of a bone - white highrise on Ocean, just a mile or so from where the Handler - Gutierrez murders had taken place.

The entry hall was a crypt of marble floors and mirrors, furnished with a single white cotton sofa and two rubber plants in wicker canisters. The upper half of one wall was given over to rows of alphabetically arranged brass mailboxes. It didn't take long to locate Kruger's apartment on the twelfth floor. I took a short silent ride on an elevator padded with gray batting and exited into a corridor floored in royal - blue plush and papered with grasscloth.

Kruger's place was located in the northwest corner of the building. I knocked on the royal - blue door.

He opened it, dressed in jogging shorts and a Casa de los Ninos T - shirt, shiny with perspiration and smelling as if he'd been exercising. He saw me, stifled his surprise and said, "Hello, Doctor" in a stagey voice. Then he noticed the gun in my hand and the stolid face turned ugly.

"What the - "

"Just get in," I said.

He backed into the apartment and I followed. It was a small place, low ceilings sprayed with plaster cottage cheese and starred with glitter. The walls and carpet were beige. There was little furniture and what there was looked rented. A wall of glass offering a panoramic view of Santa Monica Bay saved it from being a cell. There was no artwork on the walls, except for a single, framed wrestling poster from Hungary. A tiny convenience kitchen was off on one side, a foyer to the other.

Athletic equipment filled a good portion of the living room - snow skis and boots, a pair of waxed wooden oars, several sets of tennis rackets, running shoes, a mountaineer's backpack, a football, a basketball, a bow and quiver of arrows. A beige - painted brick mantel was topped by a dozen trophies.

"You're an active boy, Tim."

"What the hell do you want?" The yellow - brown eyes moved around like pachinko balls.

"Where's the little girl - Melody Quinn?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Put that thing away."

"You know damn well where she is. You and your fellow murderers abducted her three days ago because she's a witness to your dirty work. Have you killed her too?"

"I'm no killer. I don't know any kid named Quinn. You're crazy."

"No killer? Jeffrey Saxon might not agree."

His mouth dropped open, then shut abruptly.

"You left a trail, Tim. Pretty arrogant to think no one would find it."

"Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"I'm who I said I was. A better question is who are you? A rich boy who can't seem to stay out of trouble? A guy who enjoys snapping twigs at hunchbacks and waiting for the tears? Or just an amateur actor whose best bit is an impression of Jack the Ripper?"

"Don't try to pin that on me!" He rolled his hands into fists.

"Hands up," I waved the gun.

He obeyed very slowly, straightening his thick, brown arms and lifting them above his head. It drew my attention upward, and away from his feet. That enabled him to make his move.

The kick came at me like a boomerang, catching the underside of my wrist and numbing the fingers. The gun flew from my grasp and landed on the carpet with a thud. We both leaped for it and ended in a tangle on the floor, punching, kicking, gouging. I was oblivious to pain and seething with fury. I wanted to destroy him.

He was an iron man. It was like fighting an outboard motor. I clawed at his abdomen, but couldn't find an inch of extra flesh. I elbowed him in the ribs. It knocked him backward, but he rebounded as if on springs and landed a punch to the jaw that threw me off - balance long enough for him to get me in a headlock, then hold me skillfully at bay so that my arms were ineffective.